What is Existential Logotherapy?

The following statements express our basic concepts regarding the extraordinary value of Franklian Existential Logotherapy as interpreted and modified by Professor Jard DeVille.  Life can be filled with meaning, although there is no one great MEANING OF LIFE written in letters of fire across the sky and valid for all persons in all times and places.  Humans, who haven’t even had two identical fingerprints since the beginning of time, are much too individually complex for a one size fits everyone approach.

1. Every authentic or emotionally honest life can become meaningful and mature during the most rewarding and challenging of times.

2. Our basic human motivation is our consistent need to find sound sources of meaning for ourselves in places of the heart where we belong among good souls with whom we share faith, hope and love.

3. Liberated souls have the freedom and ability needed to find a sense of purpose in all we do for the society in which we live, love and existence.

We hold the following assumptions about life and love.

1.  Our first assumption is that each person is a subjective soul consisting of body (soma), mind (psyche), and spirit (logos).  Our bodies and minds supply the tools and attitudes through which we function while our spirits express what we really are in the greater scheme of life and love.

2.  Life has potential meaning under all circumstances – granted to all persons through God /Nature’s grace.  This grace is something mystical all persons will experience consistently when we identify with the Cosmos and embrace life and love with a psychospiritual mindset.

3.  A purposeful life has requirements which persons must fulfill if our choices are to be meaningful.  This third assumption, existential or life-style meaning focuses our daily choices. When embedded in ultimate or existential meaning — this working meaning can be expressed pragmatically.   This is done by projecting the realities of faith, hope and love into society through our spiritual virtues and responsible choices and by following the promptings of an awakened conscience.

4.  People have a persisting need for meaning although we often must discover or even create the truest purposes of life for ourselves.  This fourth assumption is that our search for meaning is the main motivating factor of our attitudes and activities.  Living meaningfully is more important than grubbing ruthlessly for possessions, prestige, pleasure and power.  When we live with a sense of purpose in our activities and attitudes, we can persevere through life’s bad days as well as enjoying satisfying times.

5.  Women and men retain their yearning for spiritual meaning throughout their entire lives.  Assumption five is that we are free to focus our need to find meaning and that this can be done under any and all circumstances.  It includes a victory of positive attitudes, high expectations and responsible choices – despite any and all painful events.  Jesus, the first and finest Logotherapy counselor demonstrated this when he courageously faced suffering and an ignominious death because the self-evident truth of his ministry angered the religious and political establishments of his day.

6.  Each individual is a unique soul consisting of his or her own physical, psychological and philosophical values, attitudes, expectations, beliefs and choices.  While we speak of these three traits individually because we cannot write about all of them at once — in each person’s life they are as inextricably linked together as the ingredients of a cake after it has been baked.

A Cautionary Note – When we use the word existential, as in existential psychology or existential frustration – we are referring to the existence or the life-style we persons have chosen or had thrust upon us by society. Contemporary existential psychology that comes from the words “to emerge” or “to become” has nothing to do with the bitter and secular European philosophy called “existentialism, secular humanism, nihilism or scientism.”

This belief in disbelief emerged during the ghastly World Wars, the Spanish Flu Epidemic, the Great Depression, the almost inconceivable Holocaust, a half century of the debilitating Cold War and the brutal secular greed of Global Capitalism that ravaged the world from 2007 to the present.  Pessimistic authors such as Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were reacting to the stark horrors of their era during which almost a hundred million persons were slain in the brutal 19th and 20th century wars.  It was impossible for honest European philosophers to find a silver lining to the orgy of blood and fire in which their people were trapped for three full generations.  Nevertheless — we cannot abandon so meaningful a system as existential psychology or Logotherapy because some poorly informed souls confuse the term with a similar sounding self-defeating philosophy.

Existential psychology, whose action element we apply as Logotherapy, is something entirely different.   It is best understood as a study of the way we exist or live while seeking individual and group satisfaction as humans, including our loving relationships and our purposeful careers, along with the entertaining choices through which we seek meaning among the persons with whom we belong.

Existential Logotherapy is about the way we can live, love and labor, lead and cope with both the pleasure and pain of human existence.